The last couple days, I have been dreaming when my radio turns on, so I wake up slowly and remember the dreams. Yesterday morning, I dreamed of several vivid good things but the one I remember is dreaming of writing on a story -- a story I am actually writing -- and that was yay. Also, yesterday everything smelled good all day because of the first rain in a long time. Thick, rich smells you could almost cut with a knife. I bet the dogs loved it: their world got 300 times more colorful overnight.

This morning, I was dreaming of reading Patrick O'Brian's drawerfic. (Drawerfic being the stories that are written and then shut in a drawer forever, usually from professional embarrassment.) There were several short stories. The one I remember had a captain who was a cross between Jack and the saintly Anson, who took on some convict castaways, one of whom -- a fatalistic Irish maid -- was later revealed to have tentacles. (I did say this was drawerfic.) We were just getting into the interesting ramifications of this when my alarm went off and I had to get up for real. No Stephen or Stephen-analogue had yet appeared in the story, though looking back I can feel his shadow stretching all through it. I was sleepy all day.